Tokyo Steel Manufacturing, Japan’s top electric-arc-furnaces steel producer, targets to grow its carbon finished steel sales by 24% on year to 2.6 million tonnes over fiscal 2021 (April 2021-March 2022), mainly to respond to the higher steel demand, a company director shared on April 27.
The steel producer has been receiving many firm inquiries from overseas customers since early January, which led to its higher export volume in FY20, he shared, adding, “inquiries from overseas customers have been steadily coming in especially for flats, and this has supported our decision in lifting our production”.
For FY20, Tokyo Steel exported 489,000 tonnes of carbon steel, up 49% on year, or accounting for 23.3% of its total sales, with the ratio higher than the 13.6% for FY19, and this was in contrast to the 12.7% on-year decline in its total steel sales at 2.1 million tonnes, according to its latest financial report on April 23.
“Besides robust demand from overseas, domestic supply of flats may get tighter, so we will raise our flats output to about 1.2 million tonnes at our Tahara plant in central Japan – our hot rolling base, from less than 1 million tonnes in FY20,” the senior official added.
Tokyo Steel’s flat steel sales already grew 5 percentage points on year to about 49% of its total steel sales for FY20, according to the financial report.
In FY20, Tokyo Steel’s pre-tax profit fell 57.3% on year to about Yen 5.89 billion ($54.3 million), on lower sales volume and prices and higher scrap prices, the director explained.
For FY21, therefore, the company will raise its steel prices, together with higher output and sales volumes, to “improve our financial condition and to transfer the higher input costs,” the official confirmed, adding that the company expects its average steel prices at Yen 85,000/t, Yen 19,100/t higher on year, as scrap price may average Yen 44,500/t, up Yen 15,100/t on year.
So far in FY21, Tokyo Steel has already added a total of Yen 5,000-18,000/t for its flats sales over April-May.
Written by Yoko Manabe, yoko.manabe@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint Research.
Leave a Reply